Baseball Culture
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Baseball Culture
In America, baseball is commonly referred to as our "past time." I know that baseball is widely accepted and very popular in Japan, and I wanted to understand more about what baseball means to Japanese. Are there any insights you could give to what baseball means culturally to the Japanese?
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Re: Baseball Culture
[ Author: Jbroks86 | Posted: Apr 7, 2007 8:50 AM
| SFT Fan
]
Gary Garland answers a lot of your questions in his So You Want To Play in Japan topic over at Japan Baseball Daily.
Re: Baseball Culture
[ Author: snow_cow | Posted: Apr 10, 2007 10:30 AM
| CLM Fan
]
Baseball has a tremendous cultural significance in Japan. One specific example of this is the annual Koshien tournament, a national high school baseball tournament where over 4,000 schools from all over Japan compete to find one champion. Children grow up in Japan dreaming of playing in the tournament, and high school teams often practice 6 hours a day, 6 days in week all year in preparation. The tournament itself is quite popular and 50,000 spectators fill Koshien stadium to watch the finals.
I highly recommend watching the documentary "Kokoyakyu: High School Baseball" which can be found on YouTube, just search "Koshien Documentary" and it should come up. That should give you some insight into what baseball means culturally to the Japanese.
I highly recommend watching the documentary "Kokoyakyu: High School Baseball" which can be found on YouTube, just search "Koshien Documentary" and it should come up. That should give you some insight into what baseball means culturally to the Japanese.
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